Quality Use of Medicines--medication safety issues in naming; look-alike, sound-alike medicine names.

Objective: To review current literature with the objective of developing strategies and recommendations to enhance patient safety and minimise clinical issues with look-alike, sound-alike medication names.

Methods: A comprehensive search of the PubMed database and an Australian online repository of Quality Use of Medicines projects was conducted to identify publications addressing look-alike, sound-alike medication problems. Author networks, grey literature and the reference lists of published articles were also used to identify additional material.

The neural cell adhesion molecule antibody blocks cold water swim stress-induced analgesia and cell adhesion between lymphocytes and cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons.

Background: Opioid-containing immune cells migrate in a site-directed manner into inflamed tissue and adhere to sensory nerve fibers. These cells release opioid peptides in close proximity to these fibers, thereby avoiding localized degradation by peptidases, and delivering opioid peptides proximal to opioid receptors to provide antinociception.

Methods: The effects of the anti-neural-cell-adhesion molecule (anti-NCAM) were assessed on cold water swim stress-induced antinociception in Wistar rats with Freund's adjuvant-induced inflammation of one hindpaw.

Mono(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate and mono-n-butyl phthalate activation of peroxisome proliferator activated-receptors alpha and gamma in breast.

The phthalates di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) and di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) are environmental contaminants with significant human exposures. Both compounds are known reproductive toxins in rodents and DEHP also induces rodent hepatocarcinogenesis in a process believed to be mediated via the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARalpha). DEHP and DBP are metabolised to their respective monoesters, mono-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (MEHP) and mono-n-butyl phthalate (MBP), which are the active metabolites.